BurnAware Premium Review

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BurnAware Premium

BurnAware is a full-fledged and muti-task burning software which allows users to write all types of files such as digital photos, pictures, archives, documents, music and videos to CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

Features:
Burn files and folders to CD, DVD or Blu-ray Discs.
Append or update multisession discs.
Burn standard or boot disc images.
Burn ISO files to multiple recorders simultaneously.
Create boot CDs or DVDs.
Create Audio CDs.
Create DVD-Video discs.
Create MP3 CD / DVD / Blu-ray Discs.
Make standard or boot disc images.
Copy CD, DVD or Blu-ray Discs to ISO images.
Copy from discs to discs.
Verify discs byte by byte.
Recover files from damaged discs or different sessions.
Extract audio tracks from Audio CDs.
Erase and format re-writable discs.
View detailed disc and drive information.

System Requirements:
600 MHz Pentium processor or faster
20 Megabytes of free disk space
128 Megabytes of RAM
800x600 video resolution
Windows XP (all service packs)
Windows Server 2003
Windows Vista
Windows 7-10 (32-bit or 64-bit)

Product Details:
Vendor website: BurnAware Website Link
Product Type Available: Pro, Premium, Free
                                     For more details and comparison, Click Here
Price: Freeware for free version/ Trial of 10 days for Premium or Pro version
           Premium (Personal Use): $19.95 for single user Lifetime with one year free upgrades
                                                  $69.95 for single user lifetime with lifetime upgrades
           Professional (Commercial use): $39.95 for 1 user/lifetime with 1 year free upgrades
                                                           $119.95 for 1 user/lifetime with lifetime free upgrades 
Download Links: Freeware Link
                              Premium Link (10 days trial)
                              Professional Link (10 days trial)
Languages supported:


Review:
BurnAware is a family of compact, easy to use and efficient tools for CD, DVD and Blu-ray Disc burning and copying. 
The UI is really clean and compact and that too with more than 15 different types of available themes to customize the Dashboard according to the user need. The main board is divided in various sections according to the functional task that need to perform by user. 


The dashboard's file menu contains compilation of all tools organised in a menu in list way. And, settings contain some basic tweaks.


Now let’s go through for all modules one by one:

First section is "Data" containing all data handling programs
Data Disc: A data disc is a CD, DVD or Blu-ray Disc used to store electronic data, it's great for backing up your hard drive or storing important information. Choosing this module, will open new window workspace. And, the new workspace is still simple and elegant with most basic features like







Burn - Will start burning the current project to the selected disc

Option - Open up the option pane for the Data Disc module to customize the settings. 

The first tab “BOOT” contains all the following tweaks possible:

“Use lowest write speed” will write/burn the data to the disc at a lowest speed possible. Generally it is beneficial to write at such low speed to ensure no error in writing (especially for Audio files).
“Finalize Disc” will close the disc for additional writes and no further data can be burn after the current task/burn finishes.
“Verify data on disc after burning” will check and verify the data for errors after burn process completes.
“Buffer underrun protection” allows compact disc recording to automatically stop in the event of an unplanned interruption and then to resume recording.
“Use optimum power calibration” checks the proper writing power and reflection of the media in use, calculating the optimum laser power and adjusting it for writing the particular session.

Second tab “UDF” allows to change the file system version and partition type. Generally, it is recommended to use automatic settings as changing file system may lead to data errors due to system inconsistency.

Third tab “Dates” allow to give the customized file properties for create, modified or accessed dates.

Fourth tab “Labels” allow you to provide a custom name to all the projects you made along with the disc properties custom label set.

Add Files – This allows you to add the files to your current project that you want to burn to disc. A new file explorer window open to select the desired files.


Paste – paste the files that you copied from your some other place to current project.
Make folder – create a new folder to your current project.
Properties -  check the properties of a specific file present in your current project.
Remove - Delete you the file from current project (Note: this may not delete the file from disk permanently).

Boot Disc: A Boot Disc is a CD or DVD with which the computer can be started without having to access the hard drive. For this reason a boot disc is often used as an "emergency disc" to start the computer if it is not possible to access the hard drive.


All the things like UI and file options are same as for “Data Disc” except one more tab in “options” and that for Boot tweaks like boot image file directory, segments loading, etc.


Span Disc: This tool allows you to add and burn files across multiple discs. 

Now coming to the second section comprising of "Multimedia" modules.

Audio CD: Useful to burn music files that can be played using all standard CD/DVD players. To compile an Audio CD, source files with different audio formats are automatically converted into Audio CD format before being burned.


Option pane contain following useful and highlighted tweaks:
“Write CD-Text” allows you to write extra information to Audio CD which allows newer style CD players to display the CD title and the names of the tracks and artists. Your recorder must support this function and the CD must be burned in the "Disk-at-Once" mode.
“Write Method” contains two methods 1. Disk-at-once – writes the whole media in one go without deactivating the laser and 2. Track-at-once  - writes every track individually, i.e. laser gets switched off after every track.
"Pause" set a custom pause time interval after each track. Use 0 for no pause.

MP3 Disc: CD/DVD which contain music files in MP3 or WMA file formats. It holds much more data, but the quality of the audio is not as much as high as that of an Audio CD and some disc players may not be able to such discs because of unrecognised MP3 format.


DVD-Video: A DVD-Video is a DVD that contains high-quality video files and can be played on any DVD player. Please note that BurnAware don’t convert video files by itself and a VIDEO_TS folder must contain VOB, BUP and IFO files.


AVCHD/BMDV: usually used to create disc containing high quality video.


Now coming to the third section “DISC IMAGES” section

Burn ISO: An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system. Thus if you want to burn the ISO to disc then you don’t need other software to do that.


Copy to ISO: It will copy the data of the disc into an ISO file that will be stored on your PC disk.


Make ISO: Use this option if you want to create a ISO file from the file/folder present on your disk.


Make Boot ISO: If you want to create a image file (ISO) which support boot options too.


If required you may config additional boot config residing in options


Now coming to the next section “Utilities”

Erase Disc: Erase the data/content of the disk provided the disk is RW/RE specification type.


Disc Info: Displays information about the drive (compatibility, firmware, model etc.) and the disc (free space, sessions, file system etc.).


Verify Disc: It checks for the errors in the disc while reading and if found will report to the user.


Now, in the last section “Extra”

Copy Disc: Data/content of one disc to be copied to another disc directly. If Direct Copy is disabled, then copying process will be split in two stages:
a. A disc will be copied to a temporary ISO image on your hard drive
b. An ISO image will be burned to a new disc. Temporary file will be deleted.


Data Recovery: Help in recovering the data from bad locations.


Audio Grabber: It automatically search and copy the audio files from the selected disc.


The "Settings" of BurnAware allows some basic customisations but various themes to choose from

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Excerpt from BurnAware site to give more info and help about UDF and ISO options:

UDF Options
The UDF file system was developed when it became increasingly obvious that the ISO9660 file system used on CDs was no longer meeting the needs of rewritable media and DVDs. It was optimized mainly to accommodate large data volumes and to make it easy to modify an existing file system.
BurnAware can burn UDF and Bridge Discs, which contain both a UDF and an ISO9600 file system. The UDF file system can be read by, say, Windows 2000 and Windows XP with no special drivers. In case of doubt, Windows 2000 and Windows XP also read the UDF file system if both an ISO9660 and a UDF file system are detected on the medium. Writing in UDF format is particularly important when burning DVDs because UDF is the preferred operating system for these media.

ISO Options
ISO9660 is a file system that was designed with the aim of creating a file system that is as system-independent and so as compatible as possible. CDs with ISO9660 as the file system can be read on all operating systems.
ISO9660 supports filenames in 8.3 format in Level 1 (8 characters for the filename and 3 for the extension) and directory names 8 characters long. Only characters A-Z, 0-9 and the underscore (_) are allowed. The maximum interleaf depth is restricted to 8 levels (including root directory).
A total of 31 characters are allowed in Level 2 and can be read by Windows 95 and higher, whereas DOS and Windows 3.1 usually have trouble handling the long filenames.

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Final Verdict: BurnAware premium is a very light and easy-level tool for every type of user. It is very fast and has enough reliable features to rely upon which makes it one of the best tools available in its sengment.

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